Why Jesus?…

In his own words (part 4)

In his own words, Jesus came into our world “to bring glory to the Father,” John 14:13. While on this planet, then, Jesus was his Father’s biographer and portrait painter, which he was fully qualified to be – having personally “seen and heard” the workings of heaven and his Father in action (John 3:32). If anyone could turn a magnifying glass on the Father to see his brilliance in fine detail, therefore, Jesus could. 

So it’s not surprising when Jesus told his disciples in verse 6 that he was “the way” to the Father, “the truth” about the Father, and a demonstration of “the life” of the Father. “No one,” he concludes therefore, “comes to the Father except through me.” It was only through Jesus “passing on everything I learned from my Father,” for instance (John 15:15), that his disciples knew anything about the Father at all.

And to top that off, it was only by his example that they’d come to know the Father too. Or as Jesus put it in John 14:7, “if you really knew me you’d know my Father too.” It was through Jesus being the perfect reflection of the Father, therefore, that the Father could be truly known. 

None of this had hit Philip yet, however,because he says in verse 8, “Show us the Father and that’ll be enough for us.” To which Jesus replies in verse 9, “Don’t you get who I am, Philip, even after all this time I’ve been with you? Because anyone who’s seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’ when (verse 10) I’m in the Father and he’s in me. So when I speak, they aren’t just my words – they’re his too. And whatever I do, it’s my Father living in me doing it.”

That’s because, as Jesus said earlier in John 5:19, “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Everything about Jesus himself, then, was designed to accurately portray his Father.  

But there was another way Jesus was revealing the glory of his Father – and perhaps the most meaningful way to his disciples too – when he told them in John 15:8, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit.” It was through Jesus enabling them to do that, therefore, that would not only bring glory to the Father, it would clearly identify them as Jesus’ disciples too…(continues Wednesday)